


While We Are Young

by bulletandsophia



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Falling In Love, Romance, Short & Sweet, Stolen Moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 04:10:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11176743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulletandsophia/pseuds/bulletandsophia
Summary: Apartment, sunsets, and musings.





	While We Are Young

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a writing exercise during a lazy morning in a coffee shop. I eventually turned it into something about Jon and Sansa. I hope you enjoy. :)

The city lights start to wake as she begins to rest.

The view of the sky from the bedroom window blushes in pink and orange like a painting he made from long ago—that image of the horizon when the sun is just about to set and touch the sea. There was too much beauty to behold in those few minutes he fears he was never able to capture it in full. But in his mind, its utter splendor remain surreal and always in its beauty, he finds her there.

He watches how she stumbles in the bath with her toothbrush in hand. Her laughter echoes in their small bedroom as her eyes now search his from where she stands in front of the sink, wondering.

 _Stop staring_.

But he can’t. He can never. She rolls her eyes before closing the bathroom door and he feels the slight disappointment because he always just wants more. More, more, more. But then he hears her garbled singing that despite his lack of view, a sigh escapes; a smile follows after.

He feels full and weightless at the same time, at this exact moment where he leans against the headboard and continues to listen to her voice. The orange rays of the sun trespass the room and paint a wistful picture before him. Her dress is strewn on the floor, his socks hastily dangling from the floor lamp in the corner, some books lay open and scattered from when he pushed them away to place— _devour_ —her atop his desk, and then the bed, as he looks around him, is a mess of sheets and pillows and other discarded pieces of clothing that only remind him of their fingers and limbs that sweetly, _tightly_ , and infinitely entangle. He wonders, can a source of comfort become evil when consumed all at once and more? When tenderness equals despair and greed? When every thought of her result to more frantic acts of wanting to reach further and finally touch her soul? He never knew such agony before. But if she is agony, then he welcomes her like a starving, thirsty man.

She is someone he cannot define for a single word can never do justice. She cures something and everything wrong that reside in his bones and yet she remains the ache in his chest whenever it expands or thrums or yearns. She makes him breathless for that last sinful air; like the fire that gives light to him who lurks in the shadow and the quietness—but he finds soon enough, she is a certain kind of darkness too that swallows and drowns.

He can let go of his beloved mundanity and indifference if only he can have her deeply, _forever_. For what can the city offer that she cannot? She creates a whole new entire world for him to indulge. The plains and hills of her body, the streams that curves, her fierce and fiery determination that engulfs him like bonfires on rooftops and legs running past other angry tenants on the steel fire escape. Her laughter rings like an alarm bell. It mystifies, it panics, it holds him in a state of restlessness only she, too, can pacify. There can never be a way to escape her beauty, this root cause of his wrath when other eyes linger; the root cause perhaps, of his certain demise.

 _Sansa_ is the name he traces and utters like a reflex and yet still fears that he will forget (for he never wants to). Other names drift on his lips but they never taste the same, like hazy figures or blank faces he walks past inside nameless shops or corner pubs. He doesn’t know what to do for when he looks around, she is everywhere. Every waking hour, every minute, every second. It strikes him now like some sort of wonderment. The enormity of it—of her—reduces him to something minuscule, someone who weeps and kneels at her feet.

Is this what he thinks it is? But how can it feel so utterly true and profound when once upon a time, he never believed such things? He doesn’t know how to survive this, this circumstance that he is in. This foreign sensation of love that threatens to flip things over, where its full weight is something she easily and plainly carries in her soul. The rawness of this truth that dawns excites and terrifies him at last.

This is it.

This is how it is. This is how it feels. This is where _it_ begins.

It is her name. It is her body. It is her face. It is her laughter.

It is when she sings off-key inside his bathroom.

It is _her_ —just her; where she is everything, all at once.

* * *

He is a mystery that pulls her closer to a space she never crossed before. But how wonderful is it to traverse this unknown path with him? Breathless, he guides her as she encloses her hand in his. She keeps up even if prying eyes never wander away and words flow like a heavy stream. _Too young_. _Too vulnerable_. _Too hasty_. And yet, he answers all her doubts in random days—his umbrella secured in her bag when the rain threatens, his favorite (and unfinished) crossword puzzle handed over during breakfast, his long hours of waiting (even if out of place) in frilly shops as she scours for new materials,  the endless pages of his sketch pad she once sneakily browsed through only to find out that it was filled with images of her: her hands, her hair, her face, her body—her.

Her, her, her.

In moments when she sees herself in charcoal black and gray, skillfully drawn by his hands, she feels immaculate, relearning herself through his eyes and in return, she submits herself to his devotion and yearning. Her heart beats fast in her chest as she puts down her toothbrush, as her garbled singing halts, taken a back with the sudden realization that simply, she cannot exist where he does not exist; she cannot remain quiet if his thoughts are erratic; for whatever troubles him, troubles her. Whatever he fears, also trembles beneath her skin.  

He is larger than life itself, like the huge canvass he painted that spans the entire wall of the exhibit. He becomes the universe she walks on, submerging herself to the vivid colors of his works, his passions, his life. But how curious is it to see his world as if a reflection of hers too, as if in every stroke he makes intends to simply immortalize this figure of her, this version of her only he can decipher?

She does not know when it all began. Only, as she climbs inside the hot tub, feeling restless and giddy like a child for she admits, at this moment where the sun sets and the grime and the hardships of the city outside cannot touch her, she already is in the middle of _it_ —where time already shattered and crumbled and sad endings are deemed irrelevant. Right now, she lives in this moment surrounded only by him and him alone, unable to deny the elation that while he reveres her like a goddess, she’d still willingly pick and bite that tempting, sinful fruit just so she could have him, love him infinitely, risking and casting herself out of her perfect, mythical land.

The room suddenly feels empty and she itches to touch him now. She calls for him like a maiden once trapped inside a broken tower, patiently waiting for someone to come get her. And the ruffling on the other side, as his heavy footsteps near, makes her blush for he is coming to save her yet again. _Jon_. _Her Jon_. The city was once her cage and he freed her from its graying walls and empty spaces and murky dreams and welcomed her inside this quiet, cramped space so wonderfully disorganized and full and yet, every inch is a sight, a smell, a texture she obsessively and possessively consumes. This is his world. And now, forever, it is her world too.

He enters but lingers in the doorway. His gaze impales her and this view of him, where the last remaining hints of dusk invites itself in his frame, takes her breath away.

 _Closer_.

With a smile, he crosses the distance. Agonizingly, watching as he does so, he climbs the tub and settles between her legs—gently, quietly, and where only his eyes and his skin on hers matter. He rests his head on her chest and her hand reaches for his hair. She breathes in. He breathes out. The window above reveals a slowly darkening sky. The pink turns to purple, the purple turns to indigo, the indigo turns to black. He loves this time of the day the same way she loves the early morning sun. She likes this. She likes this silence and she knows no place else to see the spectacle before them. They stay put for so long that the water cools and the bubbles disappear. She does not mind, too, the wrinkly fingers and toes for this moment of immobility with him inside the tub is so much lovelier. Her once aching muscles, tired from climbing the step-ladders of the world, now feels jelly in his touch. He moves only to close the one last gap that keeps them apart.

Her breath hitches, he murmurs her name, then she holds him closer for they belong together this way; in this beauty, in this silence, in this truth of bodies that tangle.

Outside, the first of the stars appear in the sky.

* * *

 


End file.
